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The Devil You Know Mike Carey Books

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The Devil You Know Mike Carey Books

"I took a strong dislike to him right then to save time and effort later."

"…Well, sometimes cruelty is kindness in disguise. Sometimes pain is the best teacher. Sometimes it does you no harm to realize that there’s a limit to what you can get away with."

"The party guests milled around like a decapitated squid—lots of appendages, no brain, faintly suspect smell."

"He was an elegant parasite who managed to make you feel you should be thanking him while he scrounged off you."

"But if God had meant us to climb the mountain in a day, he would have put in a chairlift."

This series has every possibility of making me completely obsessed, and I’m excited to see where this goes.

The really boiled down plot is basically about an exorcist, Felix, who is hired to get rid of a ghost. I’d consider this more of a supernatural mystery. It starts out pretty simple but takes on some nifty twists and turns along the way.

The setting is an alternative London where ghost are common. There’s some otherworldly creatures that make a showing and up the action. I think Carey did a great job introducing us to the world without pages of lengthy explanation where every nuance is revealed regardless of its association to the current story. I had everything I needed in order to understand what was happening. With ghosts being a common, known part of life, it created an interesting take on what is commonly hidden from the general public in other such books. It’s out there, and Felix’s profession is used and recognized, to a certain extent. I was going along with this just fine until a friend pointed out that for a world where ghosts were supposedly so common, there were a few people who hadn’t seen them or didn’t believe in them. Looking back, I would have liked that explored a bit more. Or perhaps I missed something.

I liked the characters in this book. Despite the cast surrounding our main protagonist, Felix was by far my favorite. He’s been through some stuff that’s made him a bit unsure of himself, and it’s given him a rather grim outlook. For me, I loved the voice of Felix. It drew me in quickly and held me the entire time. He has a bleak outlook sometimes, but it’s delivered with subtle humor and cynical sarcasm, but it’s not overly done. Even better, I could actually feel him growing in this book. By the end, he’d changed, and I’m a huge supporter of where he’s heading. I guess I was drawn to him so thoroughly that it made the other characters a tad bland. They all have their own quirks, but they felt standard: a plucky, adventurous girl; a long-time friend that’s there for him; a bad mobster type villain. There’s a few characters that have huge potential, such as his brother and a conspiracy zombie nut. I’m thinking since this is just book one, those characters will unveil deeper meaning as time progresses.

As I said, I loved the voice of Felix which led me to enjoying the writing. It moved quickly. The pace was nice. The action great. My only negative comes down to the very very lengthy descriptions. I don’t live in London, so a lot went right over my head. None of it helped me imagine the setting, probably because I grew too bored too quickly to take the time to let it. Moreover, it bogged everything down.

I won’t compare this to Dresden as many have. The characters and world are different enough that I’m not inclined to do so. And I feel this is very different from Constantine, which is another comparison I read. Right now, Felix is very ghost oriented, whereas Constantine is more heaven and hell focused. These might eventually converge—I can see the potential of it—but as it stands now, they’re different.

So overall, if you like the supernatural and mystery, I highly recommend this book.


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The Devil You Know Mike Carey Books Reviews

If you like urban mythology / ghosts / demons, (see Jim Butcher's, Dresden Files) then you'll probably like Mike Carey's 'across the pond' take that's set in London. A very nice round on, what's by this time, a well worn path in storytelling. Carey brings a fresh voice and writing style that's all his own. The prose is colorful and the descriptive in the best way and the plot is twisty with lots of domino's set up to knock down later. Very fun! The thing that will bring you back are the well drawn characters, a must for any series that hopes for longevity. Carey bring that in spades!
This book has been sitting on my for quite some time. According to the information at the top of the page, I purchased this book on May 22, 2008. So, it's been sitting there for a long time. Thankfully, its an eBook, so it gathered no dust. (I think it might even have been free -- back in the early days of the , they were always giving away free books).

I regret that it took me so long to read it.

Meet Felix Castor part Dennis Lehane's wise-cracking PI, Patrick Kenzine; part demon hunter John Constantine -- but less broody; part Anita Blake (from the early books, not the sex-starved being she's transformed into). Felix's gift is that he can vanquish spirits, a gift that's coming in handy since all kinds of weird things are wandering the streets of London these days, from werewolves to zombies. There's even a succubus with an unpronounceable name -- it's worth reading the book just to make her acquaintance!

Told in the standard first-person Private Investigator tone of voice, Carey gives new blood to the hard-boiled detective novels of old.

There's action, suspense, an assortment of interesting characters, a touch of sex, and a heck of a lot of fun!

I'm sorry I waited so long to read this -- I won't wait so long to read the next books in this fun series.
Is Felix Castor John Constantine?
Both live in London and thrive in all the seedier corners.
Both had a life altering “failed” exorcism which still haunts them today.
Both are right bastards especially with the fairer sex.
Hmmm, I’m pretty sure I could go on but most importantly both were written by Mike Carey. He wrote for DC Vertigo for years, I remember very much enjoying his work on Lucifer and Hellblazer. His Constantine stories rank up there with those by Ennis. Perhaps he felt he had more stories to tell with the character and created Castor as a way to tell them since Vertigo is no more and DCs current take on Constantine is at best a watered down version.

It took me awhile to get into this book. It didn’t immediately grab me like “ The Girl with All the Gifts” did but I eventually did get into it and enjoyed it.
"I took a strong dislike to him right then to save time and effort later."

"…Well, sometimes cruelty is kindness in disguise. Sometimes pain is the best teacher. Sometimes it does you no harm to realize that there’s a limit to what you can get away with."

"The party guests milled around like a decapitated squid—lots of appendages, no brain, faintly suspect smell."

"He was an elegant parasite who managed to make you feel you should be thanking him while he scrounged off you."

"But if God had meant us to climb the mountain in a day, he would have put in a chairlift."

This series has every possibility of making me completely obsessed, and I’m excited to see where this goes.

The really boiled down plot is basically about an exorcist, Felix, who is hired to get rid of a ghost. I’d consider this more of a supernatural mystery. It starts out pretty simple but takes on some nifty twists and turns along the way.

The setting is an alternative London where ghost are common. There’s some otherworldly creatures that make a showing and up the action. I think Carey did a great job introducing us to the world without pages of lengthy explanation where every nuance is revealed regardless of its association to the current story. I had everything I needed in order to understand what was happening. With ghosts being a common, known part of life, it created an interesting take on what is commonly hidden from the general public in other such books. It’s out there, and Felix’s profession is used and recognized, to a certain extent. I was going along with this just fine until a friend pointed out that for a world where ghosts were supposedly so common, there were a few people who hadn’t seen them or didn’t believe in them. Looking back, I would have liked that explored a bit more. Or perhaps I missed something.

I liked the characters in this book. Despite the cast surrounding our main protagonist, Felix was by far my favorite. He’s been through some stuff that’s made him a bit unsure of himself, and it’s given him a rather grim outlook. For me, I loved the voice of Felix. It drew me in quickly and held me the entire time. He has a bleak outlook sometimes, but it’s delivered with subtle humor and cynical sarcasm, but it’s not overly done. Even better, I could actually feel him growing in this book. By the end, he’d changed, and I’m a huge supporter of where he’s heading. I guess I was drawn to him so thoroughly that it made the other characters a tad bland. They all have their own quirks, but they felt standard a plucky, adventurous girl; a long-time friend that’s there for him; a bad mobster type villain. There’s a few characters that have huge potential, such as his brother and a conspiracy zombie nut. I’m thinking since this is just book one, those characters will unveil deeper meaning as time progresses.

As I said, I loved the voice of Felix which led me to enjoying the writing. It moved quickly. The pace was nice. The action great. My only negative comes down to the very very lengthy descriptions. I don’t live in London, so a lot went right over my head. None of it helped me imagine the setting, probably because I grew too bored too quickly to take the time to let it. Moreover, it bogged everything down.

I won’t compare this to Dresden as many have. The characters and world are different enough that I’m not inclined to do so. And I feel this is very different from Constantine, which is another comparison I read. Right now, Felix is very ghost oriented, whereas Constantine is more heaven and hell focused. These might eventually converge—I can see the potential of it—but as it stands now, they’re different.

So overall, if you like the supernatural and mystery, I highly recommend this book.